Interval training has been believed to be the best workout for most people. Studies that date back to 2007 show that even people who've experienced heart failure achieved greater cardiovascular benefits from aerobic interval training. So how do you track your heart rate and train in specific heart rate zones to maximize the benefits and get better results?  Heart rate monitors, or many state of the art exercise machines which have heart rate monitors built in, can help you track your heart rate.  Keeping track of your heart rate will help you track how hard you are working, and if you need to ramp up the effort or reduce it.  Furthermore, each zone is designed to target a specific area of aerobic fitness.  Let’s take a look at each of the 5 heart rate zones:

Heart rate zones, or the percentage of maximum heart rate:

Zone 1: 50-60%

•    Comfortable effort good for warm-up, cool down, and recovery between higher heart rate zones

Zone 2: 60-70%

•    Average effort, which is good for training aerobic maintenance or cardiac output.  Zone 2 also helps maintain the volume of blood the heart pumps per minute.  This exercise should be easy enough to have a conversation during.

Zone 3: 70-80%

•    Above average effort, which is ideal for training for improvements in aerobic capacity.

Zone 4: 80-90%

•    Hard effort, but not max effort. This should be sustainable during an exercise and is good for maintaining anaerobic capacity.

Zone 5: 90-100%

•   This is your max effort, so go as hard as you can go.  This is great for developing anaerobic capacity.

As the go-to fitness routine, interval training improves strength and endurance over moderate-intensity steady-state cardiovascular exercise. Study after study has shown that interval training, particularly high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is the gold standard for rapid results in speed, strength and endurance, whether it is from running, cycling, weight training or using cardio machines at your gym.

High-intensity interval training is all the rage for total body fitness. Think home workout videos like Insanity, CrossFit and other boot camp-style classes. People have seen amazing results from this approach and by the way, this approach is not just for advanced fitness. Just getting started? This may be the best approach to try.